*Wattys 2018 Winner / Hidden Gems* CREATE YOUR OWN MR. RIGHT Weeks before Valentine's, seventeen-year-old Kate Lapuz goes through her first ever breakup, but soon she stumbles upon a mysterious new app called My Dream Boyfriend, an AI chatbot that has the ability to understand human feelings. Casually, she participates in the app's trial run but finds herself immersed in the empathic conversations with her customizable virtual boyfriend, Ecto. In a society both connected and alienated by technology, Kate suspects an actual secret admirer is behind Ecto. Could it be the work of the techie student council president Dion or has Kate really found her soulmate in bits of computer code? She decides to get to the bottom of the cutting-edge app. Her search for Ecto's real identity leads Kate to prom, where absolute knowledge comes with a very steep price.

In Tokyo, where the System siphons thought, emotions & memories, a literature student meets a strange psychic girl and they embark on an escape from mindless agents, dream worlds and reality itself, in a soul-searching journey for love, for identity and what it means to be human. But all that remains is a peculiar coffee shop order. The novel examines the human condition, perception, socio-political systems, capitalism and consumer culture, incorporating paranoiac conspiracy theories, surreal cosmic visions, circular symbolism and shifting parallel worlds, with profound discussions of coffee, art, literature and music. [Dystopia, Magical Realism, Philosophy, Literary] #1 Sci-Fi, Spiritual; #Wattys2014 Award Winner; Featured on Wattpad, IndieReader, @DIGonUSA "Struck me to the very core of my being." "Very interesting concept of reality... Thought provoking.." "I have been turned to a whole new way of thinking because of you." "Like a seven course meal full of spice and illumination... One does not listen to a classical piece to get to its ending. No. It is the ride, the moment by moment...a genuine Masamune among stories." "It was both personable and philosophical. A rare breed of good story and thought provoking ideas... A virtual standing ovation would not be enough to encapsulate the absolute awe I have of you." "It's not a regular thing to find a piece of work that oozes sophistication and embodies literature and art." "The world Takatsu has created opens to the deeper awareness of another, the draw of another." - Mary L Tabor, Wattpad author, essayist, professor "Offers acute, almost painful observations of the minutiae of life, if life took place in a Murakami snow-globe." - IndieReader Insiders "Vapoury style that seems to hover off world at times...haunting and strange (which is good)...You're on to something different, striking." - B.W. Powe, York University English Professor, award-winning author, poet, philosopher http://EspressoLove.tk